<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>How to Say Goodbye by perfectpro</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29701452">How to Say Goodbye</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectpro/pseuds/perfectpro'>perfectpro</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Episode: s05e13 When the Saints Go Marching In, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 16:35:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,066</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29701452</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectpro/pseuds/perfectpro</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In another life, this would only be the start of their story, not just how it ends.</p><p>Klaus and Caroline's goodbye scene from 5x13 of The Originals, written from Caroline's point of view.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>How to Say Goodbye</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>“I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.” - Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and Song of Despair</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Klaus stiffens when he notices her, but the hesitant smile gives him away all the same. “Caroline, if you’re here to stop me,” he starts.</p><p>They hadn’t exactly left things on the best terms.</p><p>She’d told Alaric that she couldn’t stay because a werewolf on the grounds was too much of a risk, but he’d seen right through the excuse. They’d had students go through countless transformations over the years, yes, but the truth of it was that she was terrified she wouldn’t be able to sit idly by and watch Klaus take the magic for himself, magic too strong and too dark for anyone else to handle.</p><p>When he told her that Klaus was still alive, that Elijah had bought them some small amount of time, she had packed a bag for New Orleans without thinking.</p><p>“I’m here to collect a debt,” she tells him, and maybe there’s a kind of truth in the statement. He owes her this much; she believes it for whatever reason. Believes so strongly that she left the school and her girls behind for a last look at the man who has always seen her heart for what it is.</p><p>She hasn’t come to talk him out of him even though a part of her desperately wants to. She wants him to be selfish, to live more unearned years, this time by her side. Everything in her objects to the decision that he’s going to make, that he’s already made.</p><p>Everything except for the part of her that’s a mother, the part of her that looks at her girls and knows she’d give anything to keep them safe. Both of them. There are not so many years left before their twenty-second birthday as there once were, and Caroline thinks she understands his sacrifice in a way that few others are capable of.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>-x-</p>
</div>A weight hangs over them, even as he walks her through Bourbon Street, and she doesn’t tell him that she thought about coming here over the years and seeking him out. She doesn’t tell him about how cold the city was when she first came, only to find him missing.<p>When they wind up at a bar, Klaus has apparently given up on pretending that this visit is happening under normal circumstances. It’s a jazz bar, because that’s what New Orleans offers and it's actually a bit more of a dive joint than she’d expected from him. If she’d had to guess, she’d have put money on a band with brass, lively enough for a dance floor with couples spinning around carelessly. The lone piano player is quieter, more sedate, and it fits him in a way she hadn’t thought to consider.</p><p>What else does she not know about him? What else does she have to learn about his unknowable past?</p><p>“Would you even be here if I had longer to live?” he asks of her, his blue eyes dark and curious, as though he really doesn’t know.</p><p>Maybe not on this day, maybe not in this year, but yes. She would have found her way to him eventually. That was always the plan. Once her daughters (her mortal daughters, young and beautiful with their whole lives ahead of them) passed on, once she had no ties to bind her or obligations to fulfill, she’d have wound up in New Orleans, maybe in this very bar, sitting next to him.</p><p>In another life, this would only be the start of their story, not just how it ends.</p><p>“Maybe I’d have let you chase me around for a few more centuries,” she tells him, making a joke out of it. “That was always the fun part anyway.” </p><p>Caroline lets herself imagine that life. There are a thousand lives she could have lived, and her wedding ring weighs heavy on her neck. One spent with Stefan. One as a mortal girl who never learned the truth of the supernatural. One where she came to New Orleans when Klaus asked it of her all those years ago. </p><p>This is the life she has. A mother, a widow, headmistress to a school that is dedicated to helping supernatural children. Klaus is going to die, and she can’t watch. She doesn’t think she could stand by and not do something supremely selfish, something that would ruin her forever.</p><p>Klaus smiles at her, but it’s a brief, fleeting thing. Genuine but overwhelmed by his situation, and she wants nothing more than to lean over and take his hand and ask him not to. </p><p>Caroline steels herself, sets her drink down, and tells him what he needs to hear. What Hope needs him to hear.</p><p>“Say goodbye to your daughter, Klaus. Give her real closure.” She wants to take his hand and finds that all of her courage has abandoned her. She is a coward and knows it, but this is the right thing to do. </p><p>“Closure is a myth,” he announces without pause, because he’s a thousand years old and has never had to worry about loose ends. His hubris is so obvious in moments like these.</p><p>With a sigh, she thinks that he needs comfort. He needs someone to hold his hand and tell him that he’s making the right decision, and she can’t be that for him. If she touches him, she thinks she’ll break, that the façade she’s kept together so well will crumble, and she’ll beg him to stay, to figure out another way, to let Elijah and all of his nobility die with him.</p><p>She thinks of her daughters and the lengths she’d go to them, and she tries to give him what little comfort she can. “What you’re doing is noble, Klaus, but if you don’t say goodbye… If you leave Hope with questions and pain and anger, you’ll haunt her. I don’t think that’s your endgame.”</p><p>The music around them is melancholy, and it’s nothing if not bittersweet and appropriate for the moment at hand. Caroline hopes that he hears what she’s trying to tell him. He’s going to haunt her even with this last goodbye, even with these past few stolen moment throughout the year. She’s caught herself at school, staring at Hope and thinking that the girl wouldn’t even exist if she’d allowed herself to make the right choice.</p><p>The right choice. Choosing a man who’d always seen the value she held, who hadn’t needed to be convinced, who hadn’t needed time to decide if she was worth it. A man who saw what she was worth and sought to make himself worthy of it.</p><p>Even Stefan, when it came down to it, had chosen Damon’s happiness over his own. Which was noble and good and everyone loves him for it, but sometimes she sees Damon and Elena and their love for each other and hates Stefan a little for his sacrifice and selflessness. For choosing Damon over her, for not being able to give her the life and the love that she deserved.</p><p>Klaus looks at her and shakes his head before saying, “I don’t know how to say goodbye.” He doesn’t add what they both know to be true: he’s never had to.</p><p>Caroline laughs, not because it’s funny but because she never thought it would come to this. She’s said so many goodbyes in her life, but she never thought she’d have to say one to this man.</p><p>He was supposed to be invincible. </p><p>They were supposed to have time together. She’s never going to grow old, but if she had to she’d want to do it with him by her side. It’s tempting to cry, to dissolve into tears of fear and anger, but he doesn’t deserve that. On the other hand, she wants to ask him to not need to say goodbye. She wants to ask him to be selfish. Hope deserves a father in her life.</p><p>Caroline remembers what it was to become an orphan so young. She doesn’t know if anyone is ever ready to lose their parents, but especially not this girl who is still reeling from the loss of her mother. </p><p>His decision has already been made, and she respects him too much to try to talk him out of it.</p><p>Swallowing down the lump in her throat, she suggests, “Try this.”</p><p>There are a thousand ways to say goodbye, but she wants to let herself have the memory of him be untarnished by pleading and unfulfilled promises. </p><p>“One of you stands, walks to the door, but doesn’t turn back.” Her hand clenches on the edge of the table, because she thinks she’ll break apart if she touches him. “Even if their heart aches for just one more look, one more moment.”</p><p>She wishes she’d have found him earlier. She wishes she’d have followed him to New Orleans. She wishes he hadn’t needed to go there in the first place.</p><p>No children, but a future as bright and promising and carefree as his smile once was. They’d have been happy with each other, and that would have been enough. They’d have fought and screamed and cried, but she wishes she’d loved him earlier and not let go. He had looked at her, forever seventeen with her entire life ahead, and made promises he didn’t know he wouldn’t be able to keep.</p><p>He watches her with an intensity that’s almost stifling, but she carries on, “But you’ll know that the not looking just means… I’ll never forget you.”</p><p>She’s going to break apart. Here, in this tiny jazz bar that’s a bit of a dive, saying goodbye to the one person she never though she’d have to. She thought their future was guaranteed, and she’d taken it for granted. </p><p>There’s only one thing she can allow herself, and so she does. She leans forward and kisses him, capturing his lips and memorizing the feeling. She tries to press everything left unsaid into him. She could have loved him, would have loved him, and she’s sorry that she’ll never truly have the chance. </p><p>Soundlessly, his lips move, but there’s too much to express for any words to even attempt it. </p><p>Caroline tries not to make things harder on herself than they have to be. Staying is tempting, because everything is tempting when it comes to Klaus. Everything from the curl of his hair to the twist of his mouth demands that she remain seated and commit him to memory. If she can’t have him, at least she can have this, but she tears herself away and follows her own advice.</p><p>She stands, walks to the door, and doesn’t look back. Already, tears cloud her vision, and that’s why she doesn’t turn back. Not because she thinks it’ll make it any more meaningful, but because she’s already given them the best goodbye possible. Anything else would just be prolonging the pain.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>-x-</p>
</div>She doesn’t stay in New Orleans to hear how it happens. In her hotel, packing up her bags, she calls Alaric to say that she’s not coming back to the school. He doesn’t sound surprised, just disappointed, but he doesn’t try to talk her out of it.<p>How is she supposed to walk those hallways like she isn’t dead inside? How is she supposed to look at Hope when she returns and not hate her even though she doesn’t deserve that?</p><p>Caroline wants to be selfish, for once. She wants to be happy, and she thinks that maybe she never will.</p><p>“I’m going to find something to stop the merge,” she tells Alaric, because at least that will be worthwhile. At least she can make sure her daughters both live long enough to be twenty-two and then longer still to celebrate more birthdays. </p><p>Tears rolls down her cheeks, and she doesn’t try to stop them, doesn’t try to sound more in control than she is. If she pauses, if she hesitates, she doesn’t trust herself to not run back into the French Quarter and beg Klaus to find another way, any other way. A method of disposing the magic that doesn’t leave Hope without parents and Caroline without the man she’s always been too terrified to admit to wanting.</p><p>Instead, she grabs her passport out of her purse and books a flight to Europe, to a coven in England she’s heard promising rumors of. The idea of staying in New Orleans any longer turns her stomach.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm <a href="https://helpless-in-sleep.tumblr.com/">helpless-in-sleep</a> on tumblr! None of my work is ever beta'd, so please let me know what mistakes I've made.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>